Robin Faichney has asked if I have any comment 'on whether subject and object are "ultimately" one.'
Any assessment of this familiar mystical claim must depend, first of all, on what the terms 'subject' and 'object' are supposed to mean. I suggest we give 'object' its broadest possible reference. Let 'object' refer to anything whatsoever anybody might be aware of or pay attention to, whether physical, mental, concrete, or abstract. An object, then, is any actual or potential object of awareness or attention. Let 'subject' refer to that which is aware of the object.
The claim that subject and object 'are one' is potentially confusing. It risks seeming to mean that the subject is some object or objects, quite the opposite of what I take its intended meaning to be. As I understand it, the claim is intended as a correction to the common assumption of objectification, which in this context means the identification of the subject with some set of objects in the world. If I objectify myself, I divide the universe of objects into two sets. One set consists of whatever objects I include as myself and the other consists of everything else. To say subject and object are one is to deny that the world is really divided into these two sets.
To distinguish one set from another requires some mark or criterion of distinction, and implies a boundary. In ordinary life we can go some distance assuming objectification, in spite of radical disagreement about criteria and boundaries. I may be a materialist, believing that I am my body and my boundary is my skin. You may be a Christian, believing you are an immortal soul who only temporarily has a body. Yet either can say to the other, 'I'm in the kitchen,' and we don't have to notice any problem about the reference of the pronoun 'I'.
The problem comes up when, as philosophers, we attempt the impossible task of identifying criteria and boundaries for an objectified subject, or when, as ordinary sinners, we are driven by suffering to explore the old question: who am I? In either case the assumption of objectification-that I am a separate set of objects with a boundary or defining criteria-keeps me stuck.
To realize that the subject is not any object or set of objects is to eliminate the alienating sense of separate existence. In this respect it makes sense to say that subject and object are one, though at the risk of being misunderstood-an occupational hazard for mystics anyhow.
Mait Edey
MaitEdey@aol.com
The claim that 'subject and object are one', could also mean something else: It could mean that one and the same person could experience him- or herself as a subject and, at the same time, think of him- or herself as an object. That is the same as saying; subject and object are different ways of experiencing oneself. This is not the same as saying "the subject is some object" and neither is it a question of "identification of the subject with some set of objects". I experience myself as a thinking subject, while at the same time making myself an object of my own thought. I.e. 'I' am thinking of 'me'. The 'difference' between I (as the thinking subject) and me (as the object of thought) does not require "some mark or criterion of distinction", and neither does it "imply a boundary", but it does imply different ways of looking at the same thing.
Whether something shows up (in consciousnes) as a subject or as an object depends on how we look at it. What appears as a subject in one way of looking appears as an object in another way of looking. In this view, subject and object are different aspects, but not different things. Remember, the word aspect means 'look at'. Different aspects show up by looking at it in different ways.
To apparent need for a "criterion of distinction" or the assumption of an implied boundary comes from trying to perceive the subject and the object in the realistic mode of perception, which is "potentially confusing", as Mait Edey said quite rightly. The world is not really divided into these two sets and therefore there is no real separation. The sets are virtual divisions in my own mind, not in the real world. Even to say "subject and object are ultimately one" is potentially confusing because it still implies that there really are such things as subjects and objects in the physical world. There may be real objects in the physical world but there are certainly no subjects.
The realistic mode of perception is good for exploring real things of the physical world, but that's not the way to explore the virtual world of the mind: That requires a virtualistic mode of perception.
William van den Heuvel
heuvel@muc.de
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